


Random Ship Generator

by AlexNoelFieldingFan



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Merlin (TV), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: AU, Actually that's all we have so far, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Crack, F/M, M/M, Oh yeah we got that, Prompt Fill, Seriously they will get crack-ier, in spades, one shots
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:20:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24804586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexNoelFieldingFan/pseuds/AlexNoelFieldingFan
Summary: So this was something done for my own amusement, but I thought what the hell let's put it on ao3. Two random characters paired together with a random prompt (so far all coffee shop ones? And a weird amount of Merlin) and then I write it. I've got loads of prompts lined up so yeah. Look out for the crack! Although there are a few that went surprisingly in a making sense kind of way, and I might lowkey ship Ryan and Lestrade now.Warning: I have a tendency to finish one shots on weird cliffhangers. Sorry. Might develop some of these into full fics too, if you want me to.
Relationships: Elyan/Morgana (Merlin), Greg Lestrade/Ryan Sinclair, Gwen/Leon (Merlin)
Kudos: 2





	1. Ryan Sinclair/Greg Lestrade (Doctor Who/Sherlock)

**Author's Note:**

> Greg Lestrade/Ryan Sinclair  
> Prompt: Barista and person who has a ridiculous coffee order
> 
> https://nerds-are-cool.tumblr.com/post/133544218971/if-youre-struggling-for-au-ideas-take where I got the prompt from. Thought I'd add it in. It's also where I got the following prompts from, until I state otherwise.

“Oh no, not him again.”

Ryan turns around, but from the look on Yaz’s face, he knows who it is before he does.

“Go on,” she says, “You serve him.”

“Why me? Why do I always have to serve him?”

She sighs. “Just do it. I’ll see you later.”

Ryan approaches the counter begrudgingly and greets the customer.

“Hello, what can I get you today?”

The customer grins at the young man. “I’ll have a venti, half-whole milk, one quarter 1%, one quarter non-fat, extra hot, split quad shots, no foam latte, with whip, 2 packets of splenda, 1 sugar in the raw, a touch of vanilla syrup and 3 short sprinkles of cinnamon.”

Ryan sighs mid-way through writing all that on the cup. “You googled that, didn’t you?”

“And make it snappy.”

“Oh god,” Ryan mumbles. “Can I take a name?”

“I think you know my name by now.”

Ryan scowls and scrawls Greg on the cup, taking a few quid from the man. Yaz takes over the counter while Ryan steels himself for the coffee which will probably take about ten minutes to make. Indeed, Yaz and Graham get through three coffees in the time it takes him to make Greg’s. Eventually, he snaps the lid on.

“Greg?” He calls, and he watches the older man pick up his coffee. He’s with a woman who Ryan thinks is probably his girlfriend. Well he would have a girlfriend, he is quite handsome after all. She seems pretty annoyed with his order, probably as annoyed as Ryan. Ryan’s not quite sure why that makes him happy.

“Here you go,” Greg hands Ryan two quid, right into his hand, rather into the tip jar. They don’t get many tips, most people seem to think that giving a pound tip for a three pound coffee isn't quite worth it, they mostly get loose change. But Greg always tips.

“Come on, Detective,” the woman says. Not a girlfriend then, unless they had a very strange relationship. 

Greg nods at Ryan and follows the lady out of the shop. Ryan’s eyes linger on him for a moment as he gets into his car and drives off. Then he feels a tap on his shoulder.

“Come on,” Yaz says. “Let’s go to break. Graham can manage for a bit on his own, and Jane’s coming soon.”

“Yeah, OK,” Ryan replies, the two pounds still gripped tightly in his hand. He only realises it when he sits down, and Yaz asks him what he’s holding.

“Oh, it’s just my tip from Greg.” He shows Yaz the two quid. “Maybe you should have taken that order.”

She shakes her head. “He only orders that sort of thing when you’re working.”

“What? I never knew that. Why would he do that?”

Yaz ignores him, and reaches down to pick up a scrap of paper from the floor. “It was between the pound coins, I think.”

“Weird. Must have been from Greg’s pocket.”

The scrap is folded up tight, and Ryan unfolds it. 

‘07735293629 GL x’

“Must be for someone else. Maybe you”

Yaz laughs and snatches the paper from him. “You should call him.”

“Shove off! I’m - I’m not -”

“What? Not gay? Not interested? You notice every time he walks in the shop, you watch him every time he walks out. You’re infatuated, Ryan.”

Ryan shakes his head in disbelief, but he keeps the paper in his hand. And then in his pocket. And then, later, when nobody can see, he enters the number into his phone. Not to text Greg, of course. He just thought he should.

***

“So we’ve got three murders, on Sheldrake Place, Queen’s Gate Mews, and Lexham Gardens.”

John whistles. “Kensington. Wealthy area. Muggings?”

“Well that’s what we thought, but then-”

A ding. A text alert. Lestrade feels his throat tighten, and notices Sherlock’s eyes narrow.

“Ahem. Then we found this note, next to the third body-”

Another ding. He’d been waiting for this. Half an hour earlier, or later…

“Give me back what’s mine, or there will be more. CT.” John reads from the note that Lestrade had placed in front of him. “Who’s CT?”

“No idea.”

“How do you know the murders are linked? That they’re all being done by CT?” Sherlock asks.

“Same MO. Poison, same kind, too. Molly’s got some stuff at the lab-”

Another ding. It might not even be him. It could be Sally. Or Chris. They were going to the pub tomorrow, he might have a thing with his daughter-

“We’ll see her tomorrow,” John says, when nobody else seemed about to. “Do you want to-” He gestures to the door.

“Yeah, I’d better. Contact me if you’ve got anything.”

Lestrade’s phone is out of his pocket before the door closes behind him.

Three messages. 

‘Hey, it’s Ryan. From the coffee shop.’

‘You left your number in the tip.’

‘Don’t know if it was on purpose or…’

Lestrade can feel his heart hammering. Sure, he acts all cool, but it would take a man of steel not to fear wasting a few months of effort with the handsome young barista.

‘Yeah, it was on purpose.’

He waits. Is that enough? Is there more that needs to be said, or does he wait for Ryan first? He hails a taxi and jumps into the back. By the time he’s sat down, there’s three dots next to Ryan’s picture.

‘Oh, right.’

Very helpful. Not overly encouraging, either. Doesn’t sound very positive. Now to bring out the big guns.

‘I wondered if you’d like to go for a drink some kind.’

‘On a kind of date?’

He waits. Those three dots are quick to appear, but an answer doesn’t come for some time. It keeps starting, and stopping, each time starting and stopping Lestrade’s heart.

‘Sure. When?’


	2. Morgana/Elyan (Merlin)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Morgana/Elyan  
> Prompt: I’m worried about your coffee dependency  
> Tbh this entire fic might be based on a picture I found of Katie McGrath in I think Supergirl wearing a suit and I may have just made up my own character for her. Also this might not be finished and I might add a bit more to it.  
> Warning for kind of depression and death of a family member.

“Morning,” Elyan says, keeping up his cheerful face that his employers insist he keeps up. 

“Morning,” she yawns.

“What would you like today?”

“Large Americano, thanks.”

“That’ll be £2.40.” Same as everyday, Elyan tries not to think. She hands over the money.

“Name?”

“Morgana.”

‘Morgana’ he scribbles on the cup. Like he does every day. He asks every day. She tells him every day. They follow this inexplicable dance because he has to and she doesn’t have the energy to break it.

A couple of minutes later, Morgana’s walking away with a large americano, checking her phone with a grimace on her face. She cheers up when she takes a sip of the coffee, though. She always does.

Elyan’s starting to get slightly worried about Morgana’s coffee dependency. Every morning, every afternoon, she comes in for coffee. Probably at the weekend too. They get lots of customers, and Elyan wouldn’t notice except… she is very pretty. And she always looks a bit sad.

In Elyan’s mind Morgana is a successful businesswoman. It fits with her suit thing she always wears, and she always has the most modern phone, and sometimes she even carries a briefcase or something. And in Elyan’s mind her success has isolated her.

It’s a boring job. He gets a lot of time to think about the enigmatic Morgana.

It’s Elyan who gets her through her day, it’s him who makes the coffee that gets her through her day. Of course on the weekend, if she even comes in on the weekends, it would be Gwen who does that, but she doesn’t get her through her days of work, of running a whole business or something. Unless she works on the weekends. Which she probably does. If she’s anything like the image of her in his mind.

Which she probably isn't.

She comes in later, of course. 5:08, on the dot. Always within two minutes. Black Americano. She used to take a sugar but she gave up a few months ago. And she’s had a thing for her handsome barista for some time now, pretty much since he started working there.

They don’t exchange more than a few words each day, though. Morgana isn't shy, and she knows her limits exactly, and Elyan’s definitely within those. She’s smart too, and she knows he’s interested. But she’s resisted relationships for a while now.

Ever since Morgause’s death.

So when she gets a coffee with ‘07735293629 Pls call me’ written on it she’s instantly dismissive. She doesn’t need to call a number from a complete stranger, she’s perfectly fine on her own. She flashes a little polite smile when she sees it, and she can never fully know the pain behind the polite mechanical smile she receives back.

She gets home and puts her jacket on the back of her chair, replacing it with a comfortable jumper. A woman in business can’t afford comfort, or emotion. Or to call handsome baristas just because they wrote their number on her cup…

Morgause is on her dressing room table as she wipes her make-up off her face. Of course she is, she’s everywhere in Morgana’s life, and she couldn’t quite bare to take that little picture in its white frame off her desk. It would seem like a betrayal to her sister. 

Her sister who died, living alone because she could never let anyone in…

The lesson she had taken from her sister’s life had been to emulate her, to take up the mantle of the business she had created. Maybe she should have learnt from her mistakes.

She gets out her phone.

New Contact

07735293629 

E

New Message

…

She doesn’t know what to write. She doesn’t  _ text _ , she never  _ texts _ . She’s not twelve, she’s an adult. She can use the phone.

She closes new message, and presses the green button next to the E.

_ Ring ring. Ring ring. _

“Hi? Who is this?”

“It’s Morgana. You wrote your number on my cup.”

“Oh! You called. I wasn’t… really…”

“Any reason you wanted to talk to me?”

“Erm, well, honestly Morgana, I was worried about you.”

“Oh.” That’s not what Morgana expected. She gets hit on going to the pub, basically going outside. That’s all she expected. A date. “Oh,” she says again.

“It’s just… it’s not my place to say, I know…”

“Of course it is, Elyan. Why shouldn’t it be?”

“You know my name? I mean…” he pauses. “You do drink a lot of coffee, and you always look so tired, and you look…”

“What?”

“Sad. You’ve been looking sadder, too. Sadder and sadder. Is anything the matter?”

“I thought you were going to ask me out on a date.”

“Oh, yeah, well, that too… but are you OK?”

Over the next few hours, Morgana told all. Morgause, her father, the man she thought was her father, her half-brother (who happens to run the coffee chain Elyan works at), all she had been through in the last few years. She finds herself talking about things she’s never told anyone, all those secret fears she wished she didn’t have. And she found Elyan didn’t care, he never thought she was weak, and that he had some troubles of his own.

She found someone she could talk to.

So she does. Of course she does, why wouldn’t she? She calls him whenever she needs to, and he calls her when he just wants someone to talk to. They talk on the phone pretty much every night, and then when they actually go on that date, they talk then.


	3. Gwen/Leon (Merlin)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gwen/Leon  
> Prompt: You accidentally poured boiling hot coffee over me so you’re responsible for taking me to A&E  
> OK so I changed this a little bit by making Leon feel he had to take Gwen to a&e because y'know, chivalry. Warning: swearing. But only a bit. Also should you capitalise a&e? Fuck.

“Thanks,”

“Thanks,” Leon replies, as he is handed a cup of tea. The small cafe is pretty crowded, even for a Saturday afternoon, but he has his eye on a little empty table in the opposite corner of the room. 

There’s a small child on the floor, maybe about six, one that Leon didn’t see until he was more or less on top of it. It made him trip, and drop a large drop of very very hot water onto a young woman sitting on her own, drinking a coffee. It looked like a late.

“Oh, shit, sorry,” he says, as he picks up a napkin to give to the girl, but it’s too late. He can already see an angry red mark on her wrist.

“It’s fine, honestly,” the girl says, but Leon can see she’s in pain.

“That looks bad. You should go to A&E.”

“Honestly, I’m OK.”

“My dad’s a doctor, I know this. Please, I’ll take you, it’s just round the corner.”

“No, I-” but she winces as another shot of pain is sent through her nerves. “Well, OK then. But it’ll be fine, I swear.”

“Always best to check.”

He leads her out of the crowded coffee shop, after soaking a handkerchief in cold water from a tap and wrapping it around her wrist. She wonders for a moment how he can get out of work like this but notices the staff in the rapidly receding coffee shop casting significant looks at one another, making it clear Leon does this sort of thing all the time.

On the walk there, in which Leon is definitely more concerned than the young lady he is escorting, it turns out that the woman’s name is Gwen, and she works in a shop. She opens up pretty quickly about herself after it becomes clear Leon does actually just have a weird sense of chivalry and is definitely taking her to the hospital. They drop into a&e and are told there is going to be quite a wait, especially for such a minor injury as Gwen had. She was very tempted to just leave at this point, but she felt Leon had put in too much effort now.

He offered to stay with her and that was the point she realised it; any chivalry he had was very probably being outweighed by a desire to skip work. And it was Saturday, Gwen didn’t even have any plans for the rest of the day and to be honest, this guy was cute. 

“Sorry we couldn’t get you to see anyone yet.”

“It’s OK, it barely even hurts anymore.” At that moment she winced in pain as someone barged past and knocked her hand. Leon watched the man go, not looking back, before turning his attention back on his charge, shifting himself somewhat to shield her from that sort of thing.

“Maybe this isn't the best place to have taken you. I could have dealt with it in the cafe.”

“You really could have. I could have dealt with it at home.” She looks around at the crowd of people in the waiting room, and felt a pang of guilt. Yes, he knew what he was doing, but what if he got fired? “You still could, you know.”

“I don’t mind.”

“Look, Leon-” He looked weirdly embarrassed that she knew his name, and Gwen’s eyes strayed to the name badge on his chest. “We’re going to be here an hour, at least. You are in the middle of your shift! I won’t be responsible for you losing your job.”

“I won’t lose my job-” he starts, but Gwen stands up.

“I’m going home. I’m honestly fine!” She smiles at him, still cradling her arm, and starts to walk away. Leon follows her, but really, what else could he do? Otherwise, he’d be left sitting in a&e, uninjured.

He begins to stammer apologies after her, and her back does look sort of angry as she continues storming on. He had no way to know she was secretly laughing at him. 

She stopped, and Leon nearly walked into her. He was taken aback by the smile on her face, even a determined and honestly slightly scary smile. But it softened into exasperation.

“Look, Leon, if you wanted to get out of work, find some other way.” He felt his cheeks reddening at this, and he couldn’t deny that was partly his motivation. “And if you wanted to ask me out-” he was snapped out of his reverie and forced himself to look her in the eyes again. She really was very pretty, especially now she was smiling again. “Then ask me out.”

He coughed awkwardly, and stuck his hands in his pockets in a desperate attempt to seem cool. “We could - er - combine the two?” 

She hesitated for a moment. She really should make him go back to work. Before she realised, fuck it, she’s not his mother. If he wants to lose his job then - well, then she probably won’t date him. But for now…

“Yeah, that sounds good.”

His face broke into a wide smile. “Great.”

As they walked away, a thought occurred to Gwen.

“Your dad’s a doctor, you know what a&e waiting rooms are like. Is that really the date you had planned?”

“Look, I promise you I am not taking you to an a&e waiting room. Not this time, anyway.”

She laughed, and hung onto his arm as they searched through this town for somewhere to have a drink.


End file.
